Read Online A Romantic Way to Die by Bill Crider - Free Book Online

of her. Her left foot was in a cast that rested on an overturned bucket.
    “It’s not as uncomfortable as it looks,” she said. “Sometimes it itches under the cast, though. That’s not much fun.”
    “What happened?” Rhodes asked.
    “I stepped in a hole on the way to the barn, broke my ankle. Teach me to look where I’m going, I guess.”
    There was a TV tray beside Mildred. On the tray were a portable telephone, a battery-powered radio, and a glass of something that Rhodes guessed was water. Mildred turned down the radio, which had been tuned in to a talk show from Dallas, and reached for the glass.
    “Lemonade,” she said, taking a drink and setting the glass back on the table. “Joe made it for me before he went to work. I’d offer you some, but the one glass is all I have. It’s instant, though, and you can make one for yourself if you want to. The stuff’s in the kitchen.”
    Rhodes didn’t want to. He liked lemonade just fine, in the summertime, but it wasn’t summer, and he wasn’t thirsty.
    “No, thanks,” he said. “You called about Henrietta Bayam.”
    “Poor thing. I heard about her this morning from Annie Floyd. I couldn’t believe it, and I’d just talked to her yesterday.”
    “About some radio contest?”
    “That’s right. A date with Terry Don Coslin.” Mildred laughed. “Be my luck, I’d win. With this foot, I couldn’t go anyway. I can walk on it, but it’s not easy, and I have to use a cane.”
    Rhodes saw that there was a wooden cane hooked to the arm of the lawn chair.
    “About that phone call,” he said.
    “I knew it was a joke right off,” Mildred said. “Imagine Henrietta trying to fool me like that.”
    “She called several other people,” Rhodes said. “And none of them recognized her voice.”
    “Well, I did. I’ve been in her writing group for so long that I’ve heard her read all kinds of things. I’d know that voice anywhere.”
    Rhodes heard barking back in the barn and looked in that direction.
    “Princess is probably up on a couple of hay bales where Hank can’t get at her,” Mildred said. “Like I said, you don’t have to worry about her.”
    “I was worried about Hank,” Rhodes said.
    Mildred laughed. “He’ll be all right. When he gets himself all barked out, he’ll come and lie down in the shade till he recovers.”
    “So you’re sure it was Henrietta who called,” Rhodes said, getting back to the purpose of his visit.
    “I’m sure, all right. As soon as I caught on, I said, ‘Henrietta, you ought to know better than to try to fool an old woman like me.’”
    “Did she say why she was doing it?”
    “No. She just hung up. But it was her, all right. I remember when she was reading from Love’s Wild Deception, she used a voice like that.”
    “That’s a book?” Rhodes asked.
    “Yes. One of her better ones, too, even if it hasn’t ever been published. Or maybe it has. Some people think Vernell stole the plot from it for her own book.”
    “What do you think?”
    Mildred took another drink of lemonade, set the glass back down, and leaned slightly forward in her chair.
    “Do you read romance novels, Sheriff?”
    “I read Vernell’s.”
    “Is that the only one?”
    Rhodes admitted that it was.
    “Well, then you don’t know. But the truth is that they’re a lot alike. I don’t mean there’s a formula or anything like that. But I’m working on one myself, and it’s a whole lot the same. In quite a few romance novels, you have the same situation. There’s a woman who’s got some kind of problem, and she meets this man that really irritates her, or seems to. The readers all know that the two of them were meant to be together, but things keep getting in the way. There’s usually another man, and we all know he’s definitely the wrong one, but it looks like he’s going to get her by fair means or foul, and the troubles just keep piling up. I’d say that Vernell’s book is like that. So was Henrietta’s. But then